1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium imaging apparatus that detects a type of the recording medium, and to an image forming apparatus that controls an image forming condition according to a type of the recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional image forming apparatus, a size and a type (rough paper, plain paper, glossy paper, or the like) of a recording medium are set by a user from an operation panel or the like provided in a main body of the image forming apparatus. Image forming conditions including developing conditions, transfer conditions, fixing conditions, and the like are suitably controlled according to that setting.
To reduce such a operational load for settings executed by a user, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-182518 discusses a method in which a surface image of a recording medium is captured using a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor and a type of the recording medium is detected from the captured surface image.
However, a conventional method for detecting a recording medium performs control to suppress an influence of performance of the sensor, an error in sensor assembly, or the like to capture a highly accurate surface image. In other words, a reference sheet is used to capture a surface image and a threshold value is set to discriminate the recording medium in respective image forming apparatuses during factory shipment or the like, and therefore effort and costs are required.